World Gone Missing

by Doyle, Laurie Ann;

  So—flowers. “Nobody’d slam the door in the face of somebody delivering a beautiful bouquet of flowers,” Drew said. At VIP’s, I pick out the biggest one I can find. Everything bright pink. Mr. Vip waits on me himself—he’s wearing a name tag on his lapel—and wants to make sure I know the name of each flower: gerbera daisies, miniature tulips, pink carnations, and sweet something or other. He wraps them in orange tissue and rings me up. The flowers fill the footwell of my Toyota, pink eyes vibrating in all directions.

  North of Calistoga, Highway 29 rises into a bunch of hairpin curves with drop-offs so steep I don’t want to look. Just drive, I tell myself. I flip through radio stations, getting nothing but static. Near the top of the hill, the white shoebox I have on the seat slides and spills.

  Scattered on top of the flowers now are two of Nicky’s school photos I brought to show Lynetta. There’s the one from first grade where the camera caught him in a big grin, a gap where his front teeth used to be, and this fall’s, where he barely smiled and his hair was all gelled. Lynetta’s note’s near them. I look at the dark spot on Nicky’s baby hat. It’s blood, I decided a long while ago. His or hers, it doesn’t matter, because at that point they were pretty much the same.

  At Middletown, the road flattens out and big oak trees draw up close. I wonder what Lynetta looked like at Nicky’s age, before the teens hit. Tall, probably had all that black hair, too. Or maybe it was red, like mine. Well, probably not red. I wonder if she’s got kids—other kids—and trikes and Sit ‘n Spins and Hello Kitty shoes all over her front steps. Could be she’s found herself a nice husband. That’s why she didn’t want to talk to me. I imagine them at the kitchen table, Nicky’s mother in fuzzy slippers and a blue nightgown.

  Nicky’s mother—there’s no good word for what she is. What I am. Adoptive mother makes it sound like Nicky is a dog or a cat and I could give him back. I would never do that. Never. Just plain mother doesn’t cover it. Lots of people say real mother. I’ve always hated the word birthmother. All I have to do is look at Nicky and see she gave him way more than birth.

  Clear Lake looms into view. Mount Konocti rises on the far shore like a sleeping woman with roughly combed long hair. The lake below is anything but clear. In the nineties, someone decided water lilies would be pretty and infected the whole lake with Hydrilla. The water’s thick with the weed now. Slimy. Impossible to see your feet once you’re in past your knees, I hear.

  I drive north on 29, the road skirting the lake, feeling myself get nervous. Finally Nice appears. Like the lake, the town doesn’t live up to its name. A boarded up Tastee-Freez, and the only restaurant, Ed’s Easy Does It, looks more like a bar. On the far side of town, I see El Camino. The road climbs uphill, twisting all the way. At the Newlove Trailer Park, I slow down but that’s not it. I’m sure I’m lost now. But at the top, the street ends in a bunch of townhouses and a sign with the right address.

  This place is nice. White clapboard with blue trim, rose-colored azaleas everywhere. My heart starts going crazy. Leave, I say to myself. Go. Tell Nicky, Honey, she wasn’t home. On top of everything, the numbers on these townhouses make no sense. The five hundreds sit next to the three hundreds with single digits stuck in between. Whoever dreamed this system up didn’t have visitors in mind.

  Finally I see the buildings are grouped A, B, C, D to whatever. I jump out of the car before my mind can play any more tricks. I can’t let myself go back, disappoint Nicky. I hurry across bright green lawns, pass dumpsters and tomato-heavy gardens. Number 215899 El Camino turns out to be way over in G. Nicky’s mother’s porch light is still on, though it’s almost noon. Her concrete steps are empty. When I ring the bell, a dog sticks his nose under the fence next door and barks.

  The door opens. I take in a big breath, keeping the flowers right in front of my face. “For you,” I say.

  “Really?” Nicky’s mother’s voice sounds high and happy like his can get.

  “I’d be glad to bring this in, if you’d like. It’s pretty big.”

  “All right.”

  Only one strip of sun makes it through the shades and lights up the blue rug in her living room. In front of the plush sofa sits a coffee table neatly lined with Sunset and Woman’s Day. Magazines I read too. Everything in Lynetta’s house is blue: the rug, the sofa, even, strangely, a few magazine covers. No toys, just a long stretch of quiet room. Against the far wall, a fish tank glows. A big-eyed fish swims to the top of the water.

  “Where would you like me to set these?”

  Nicky’s mother takes the flowers and suddenly her face is in front mine. She’s smiling now and her mouth forms that same happy square that Nicky’s does. The woman’s olive-skinned and good looking. Thin, too. Stand Nicky next to her and you’d say she was his mother. She has his head of thick black hair, though silver’s winning out on the left. Wrinkles show at the corners of her eyes. Nicky’s mother is not young at all. She’s middle-aged. Maybe even fifty-two, like me. Though fifty-two looks better on her. I smile back.

  She picks through the bouquet with long fingers—his long fingers—searching for a card. “Who are these from?”

  “Your son.” Even though I’d practiced the two words in my head on the drive up here, they come out like I want to hurt her. I don’t.

  “I don’t have a son.”

  I go to place the ten-year-old note in her hand, but it flutters to the floor.

  She glares. “Who sent you?”

  “Nobody. Me.” Well, not just me, I think. Nicky.

  Lynetta walks to the couch and falls heavily into it. She crosses her legs. “I don’t have to talk to you, you know.”

  “Should I go back and tell him that?” That came out the way I meant it to. Firm, but not mean.

  “Could we not do this? Please.”

  “Twenty minutes is all, I swear, Lynetta. For Nicky’s sake.”

  “Who?” Her forehead wrinkles. “Oh.”

  “His whole name is Nicolas O’Connor Walsh. O’Connor for my side.”

  She leans back against the couch like, Twenty minutes, no more. I sit in the black leather chair alongside her, looking around. Nicky’s mother has touched everything in this room. The arm of this chair. The couch cushion. The wood-paneled walls. I wonder about the invisibilities that bodies leave behind. Cells, things smaller than cells.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised. You did call, I guess. But I always thought that if anyone ever showed up, it’d be him. Not the mother.” She shrugs her shoulders like Nicky does when he doesn’t want to talk but will let you. Strange how he has her gestures, too. Nicky’s mother is wearing blue linen shorts, crisply ironed. Her yellow blouse is linen, too, neatly tucked over a flat stomach. I have on my usual, baggy Capris and white flip-flops. Clothes I thought would seem friendly. Now I lay the April Sunset over my less-than-thin lap and hide my big feet.

  I’d thought I’d start out with something easy. Like “Where do you work?” or “Does it get real hot up here?” or say something about the price of gasoline. But the way she lifts her shoulders and sets them down again reminds me too much of Nicky. I skip all that.

  “What were you like?”

  “What was I like?” Nicky’s mother looks at my thick fingers. “I don’t understand.”

  “You know. At ten.” My voice is nervous. “Nicky’s age now.”

  “You want to know that? Really?” She laughs and her eyes light up. “Well, I really loved to—” She stops. “I was your typical girl, I guess. Dolls. Bicycles. Jump ropes.”

  “Were you quiet?”

  “I talked.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “I was a normal child, if that’s what you’re driving at. Perfectly normal. And I’m a normal woman, too. What I did was so not unusual. ”

  “I know. Of course.”

  A silence goes by as I try to figure out how to get the conversation going
in a different direction. Maybe Lynetta will ask about Nicky, what he likes to do. The room stays quiet.

  “Would you mind if I asked you something else?”

  “Go ahead.” She shrugs.

  “Well, it’s— it’s about Nicky being born. What did he—you know, do?”

  Maybe Nicky didn’t cry at all. Didn’t push his arms out, looking for something familiar to hold him. Maybe he stared out of two swollen eyes, his quiet emptying the room. Maybe his first breath was soft. Kittenish. I’ve imagined so many things. Here is the woman who can tell me.

  Lynetta shakes her head. “You ask the strangest questions.” She tilts back and looks up at the ceiling. “They put him on my chest right away. He was still covered with, you know, all those fluids. His blue eyes stared up at me, and before I knew it, he’d clamped down on my breast. Hard. Like he’d never let go. The nurses kept telling me was what a good little eater he was.”

  Lynetta’s voice is flat, as if the story belongs to someone else. I want to tell her Nicky doesn’t eat like that anymore. I have to beg food into that boy. And his eyes aren’t blue anymore.

  She sighs and evens out the magazines corners so they’re perfectly lined up. In the silence, the fish tank bubbles away. “When are you going to get to the real question?” she asks.

  “The real question?”

  “Why I left.”

  “I was working up to that.” I pull the Nicky’s newborn hat out and place it gently in front of her. “I saved all Nicky’s baby stuff. I want you to know that.”

  “Look, I don’t have all day.”

  “All right. Why did you walk away?”

  She reaches for the knit hat, puts it down. “Maybe I realized the baby wasn’t going to bring him back.”

  “Your husband.”

  “No, no. Not my ex. Robert. We met before my divorce was finalized. I fell hard, harder than I should have. Robert was the comptroller at Community Hospital in Santa Rosa. He always said he wanted kids. When I first found out I was pregnant, he seemed happy.”

  She sighs, and her yellow blouse billows a little. I imagine Nicky growing under that stiff fabric. His soft not-yet bones bumping up against hers.

  “But right before I was due, Robert moved out of the apartment we’d rented. God knows where. Took every shoe, every book.”

  “Why?”

  “You think I know? Why don’t you go ask him yourself?”

  Him. I never thought about Nicky having another father out there, someone else who took off. I imagine Robert’s face, a face Nicky might have someday. Wide at the temples. Crinkly dark eyes. Nothing like Drew’s. I see him packing a box, a frown coming onto his face.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I did what I had to. Highland Hospital was a place I knew no one would know me. Ask questions. When I got home, I told some story about the baby not making it. Everybody felt sorry for me, even my ex.”

  Sorry. That word.

  She says, “I almost went back. It was lovely the day after he was born, clear and hot and blue, the way Oakland can get in September. Not a bit of fog. I’m not stupid, you know. I’d seen the signs. Highland Hospital was a safe surrender site. I knew people would line up for a healthy baby. You did.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder about him?”

  She focuses her brown eyes on mine. “I had no interest being a single mother. After he was born, I moved to Napa to manage a hotel. Five years ago, I came up here to oversee another. I like living alone. I do. I can cook. Not cook. Read all night. Sleep in. Like this morning. Nobody bothers me. ”

  Maybe if she sees what he looks like, I think, she’ll be interested.

  “He’s a great kid, Nicky.” I set the school photos side by side on her coffee table. “This is him in first grade, right after he lost both front teeth. And here he is this fall.”

  She looks at both photos blankly. “He’s a cute boy. You must be doing a good job.”

  Her compliment comes way too easily. Like if she says something nice, maybe I’ll clear out. I feel Nicky’s mother leaving him, leaving us, all over again. Something in me rises to the surface, something impatient and smooth and hungry.

  “Why can’t you say his name, Lynetta? Nicky.”

  “Nicky. Nicky! Happy now?” She sighs.

  It’s like air being let out of a balloon. Everything around me turns silent, ordinary, and blue. The woman couldn’t care less about Nicky. And his father—Robert—couldn’t be bothered either. I lay my head back and leave it there. The big-eyed fish swims to the corner of the tank and stares.

  “I should have told you,” she says. “I go by Nadine now, my middle name.”

  The fins flutter.

  “I guess this isn’t what you wanted to hear.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Well, you were the one who decided to come.” She slides the baby hat across the coffee table.

  “What should I say to Nicky?”

  “Tell him whatever you want,” she says. “Whatever he needs. You’re his mother.”

  “And what are you?”

  “What I did is done.” She stands and looks down at me. “Listen, if it helps, feel free to go ahead and act as if.”

  “As if? What’s that mean?”

  “Pretend. Act as if I don’t exist. I can’t do either of you any good now.” She smiles for a moment and walks to front door.

  I want to say something before I leave. Tell her I’m sorry things turned out the way they did and that guy’s a jerk, and I’m so glad she brought Nicky into the world. My world.

  “Good-bye” is all I say.

  At the bottom of the hill, I drive straight ahead instead of turning onto the highway. Somebody told me that Clear Lake got so low once that you could walk all the way across. At the foot of Mountain Konocti, a cave appeared, then a cavern, then a hidden lake. Not as big as Clear Lake, but still big. Something you’d miss if you didn’t know where to look. The creatures inside were all bright white, their eyes pink and blind. Some had no eyes at all.

  I pull up in front of a covered walkway that leads to the water. It’s pretty, lined with hanging baskets of yellow geraniums. I sit there looking at the murky water and finally get out of the car. The sun is directly overhead now, and hot. I can feel it burning my hair. I remember that feeling as a child, hair so hot it felt red. Which it was. Gray’s not all that different. My feet move me towards the lake. The sand is a pure white that must have been put there for tourists. In my flip-flops, I feel its cool, then cold underlayer.

  Here I Am

  I’m the last thing people imagine when they think of a funeral director. For this late night house call, I’m wearing a purple dress and heels to match; my nails are painted lavender. I’m hardly the dowdy thing in black the family expected.

  The son hesitates, but shows me in. First, I verify that their grandmother is in fact dead: breath and pulse, no, and doll’s eye test, negative. The old woman’s eyes roll right along with her head. Though the hospice doctor’s been here and gone, you can’t be too careful in this business. Last week, some guy in Mississippi woke up in a body bag on the embalming table. It was all over the news.

  I sit down with a few family members, who want to talk funeral arrangements. “I’d be glad to answer all your questions,” I say. “Or I could come back tomorrow, if that’s easier.” No, they just want everything over with. I open the brochure, we discuss options, and I tell them about my special.

  “For nineteen hundred and ninety-nine dollars,” I say, “you get a one-day funeral, including a premier velvet-lined mahogany casket for the viewing, all the embalming, cosmetology, dressing, and supervision, two silk flower arrangements, and the use of my S&S superior hearse.” After that, the body is buried in cardboard. Thick, ecological cardboard. A lot of people like that. They did.

  I cocoon the grandmother in the flow
ered bed sheet, line the gurney up with the mattress, and start to slide her heavy body. It doesn’t budge. This has never happened to me before, not with family present.

  “Here,” the son says. “Let me help.”

  “No, thank you,” I say in what I hope is a professional voice. The last thing I want is for him to help me. But I can’t just yank or shove. The old woman deserves respect. The breath feels stuck in my throat. Finally, slowly, I check the sheet and pull it from where it’s wedged between the bed and gurney. Of course. Now the grandmother’s shoulders slide, then her fleshy legs. When the body’s firmly on the gurney, I strap her in.

  “Sometimes it takes a bit of doing,” I tell the son.

  He nods.

  In the last fourteen hours, I’ve arranged three funerals, made two house calls, set up chairs for a wake and broken them down again, ordered flowers, and filed out more forms with the City and County of San Francisco than I want to think about.

  Exhausted, I ride the elevator down to my hearse parked in the basement and drive out into the October rain. North Beach is quiet this time of night. After dropping the body off at my embalmers’, I head back to the office. There’s still work to do.

  When the doorbell rings, I have to pick my head up from my desk. It buzzes again. I groggily check in the mirror, wipe away the mascara raccooned under my eyes, and straighten my stockings. I live right upstairs from the funeral parlor. People call at all hours.

  “Lena,” a man’s voice says.

  In the window near the door, all I see is a hat, a stiff gray dome with a red-tipped black feather. I don’t know anyone with a hat like that.

  “Lena,” he calls again.

  “Denis?” I say, opening the door. “I don’t believe it.” We dated a couple years back. Not serious but not not serious either. After my divorce, I swore I’d keep it causal with men.

  Denis’s face looks broad and smooth; only a few silvery strands show in his hair. He combs it back now, which makes him look more like the financial adviser that he is—or was. We haven’t been in touch. He’s got the same strong forearms and muscular legs of an athlete that I remember loving. But his eyes, a sapphire blue, are sad in a way I’d never seen.